CPU trouble

Aridstarling

Hey, I've lately been having some trouble with my Dell Xps 1330. My battery has given out completely and the laptop only works while plugged in. Now, my main issue is that the CPU performance has deteriorated hugely too. I'm just wondering whether this could a be a battery-related problem?

I started having trouble running Cubase 5, music recording software, a few weeks ago and everything was very sluggish. I upgraded from Vista (32bit) to 7 (64 bit) to see if that would fix any of the problems. As a result, the sluggishness seems to be gone but the CPU remains problematic, working at about 25% of what it had been. The CPU is an Intel Core 2 Duo, T7250 running at 2ghz. The battery is a standard Dell one, 6 cell I think.

So really, I'm wondering if a battery replacement will restore the CPU performance?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

ricman

IT sounds like you might have a virus ,taking up memory and processor time,press cntrl alt del.Click performance,whats the page file usage ,and cpu usage.
Do a full scan for virus, s.How much space is left on the drive,windows needs around 2gig for pagefile,temporary file space.

Aridstarling

That was my initial thought but after two full scans with both Aavst and Malwarebytes I'm assured I'm clean. CPU performance tells me its varying between 10% and 25%, running Firefox, Winamp and Vuze, which sounds about right. No unusual processes there either.

There's plenty of space left on the HD, 63gb or so.

Thanks for the quick response.

Voodu Child

Check to make sure performance isn't set to 'power saver'.

Clear any dust out of the vents and fan/heatsink assembly. You will probably have to remove the bottom panel and use a can of compressed air. If your system is running too hot because dust is clogging the vents, the CPU will automatically throttle down to try to save itself from being damaged.

This is doubly important if your M1330 is the one with Nvidia 8400. High temps caused by dust/poor maintenance will fry that card in no time.

Uninstall anything that is no longer being used.

Install CCleaner and run it. Also, use CCleaner to check the startup applications and disable anything frivolous. You don't want millions of uneccessary crap running automatically every time windows starts.

Make sure you have a good, light anti-malware suite. I recommend Microsoft Security Essentials.

Defragment the hard-drive. Use Windows defragmenter or else download defraggler.

Press CTRL-ALT-DEL and bring up the task manager. Have a peep at running processes, keep an eye out for anything suspicious.

You have Vuze on your system, is it constantly uploading stuff? That will affect disk performance.

Aridstarling

It's definitely not on Power Saver but I'm thinking the dead battery might be playing havoc with the CPU temp.

I cleaned it recently but I'll definitely do so again. I use Smart Defrag regularly, but again I'll give it another go.

I'll try CC cleaner too. Thanks a million!

ED E

Have you tried using it with the battery pack removed?